New festival shows eastern promise

Patti Smith will be among the headliners at the All Points East festival

THERE seem to be big ambitions for the 10-day All Points East event coming to Victoria Park on May 25-June 3.

Not only does it begin with a three-day festival crammed with some of the most in-demand acts of the moment and end with three huge headline gigs, but it seems to be taking festivals in a different direction by putting some serious focus on the staging with details of the various efforts emerging last week.

While the line-up includes LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bjork, The XX, Beck, The National, The War On Drugs, Nick Cave and Patti Smith, there are still many more names to come.

A further 38 acts were added to the festival line-up just last week. New additions to the festival include Belgian electro band Soulwax, house and hip-hop fuser Yaeji, British dance duo Maribou State, UK hip-hop artist Jesse James Solomon, Tel Aviv post-punk group Bones Garage, R&B queens Kelela and Abra, Daft Punk-produced Aussies Parcels, French duo Her, London rapper Octavian and NTS resident DJ DEBONAIR.

Much like Hyde Park’s BST Festival, the big gig weekends will bookend a four-day, midweek, community-focused programme of comedy, food, outdoor cinema, theatre arts, children’s activities and more – further information can be found online.

The four stages are being hyped for their unique staging and impressive production capabilities. The X-Stage, which will host some of the APE electronic talents will take an “in the round” format, placing artists in the heart of the action and enveloping the crowd in sound from all angles with a multi-point source audio system with each leg of the structure housing inward-facing speaker configurations.

The stage will host performances from the likes of The Black Madonna, Omar-S, Hunee, Mr G, Roman Flugel and DJ Tennis.

The main stage – the East Stage – will be framed by full-height screens to allow the best possible viewing experience, enhanced by 60 moving lights, plus incoming artist productions, and what is claimed to be the most advanced speaker system in the UK, the Martin Multi-Cellular Loudspeaker Array (MLA), ensuring the optimum audio experience for all guests. The main indoor performance space, the West Stage, houses 97 moving lights and another 50 generic lights on stage and throughout the venue. It includes Outline GTO, an arena-level audio system where artists including Justice and Flying Lotus 3D will be adding their own widely acclaimed and immersive production.

Finally, the North Stage, inspired by many of the world’s most beautiful theatres, is formed of concentric arches, 50 moving lights and a Martin Multi-Cellular Loudspeaker Array (MLA) system.

James King, festival director, said: “Every stage at All Points East is designed to offer fans a different experience wherever they are on the site and at whatever time of the day it may be. Lighting and video are essential to delivering an ever-changing and evolving production and live experience.”